Bystanders unable to rescue driver from burning truck

Visalia police and fire crews work at the scene of a fatal crash Tuesday afternoon on West Caldwell Avenue just west of Akers Street. A box truck, on the left, ran into a parked dump truck and caught fire. The driver was killed.(Photo: Ron Holman/Visalia Times-Delta)

Visalia police were trying to determine why the driver of a box truck failed to merge into traffic on Caldwell Avenue and ended up running head-one into a parked dump truck Tuesday afternoon.

The box truck then caught fire and several bystanders were unable to get the driver out before the entire vehicle was engulfed in flames, Visalia Police Sgt. Damon Maurice said.

But whether the driver died in the fire or earlier in the crash wasn’t immediately clear, as one police official said the impact of hitting the Southern California Edison dump truck may have been strong enough to be fatal.

The name and gender of the driver wasn’t immediately available Tuesday afternoon, and the box truck was so badly burned that its wheels melted and so little of its frame remained that was hard to tell that the charred wreckage was once a truck.

Maurice said police dispatchers received reports of the crash starting at 2:12 p.m.

Witnesses told officers that the truck was heading west on West Caldwell Avenue and had just crossed South Akers Street. The truck was in the outside lane and should have merged to the left into a single lane heading west, Maurice said.

“It never merged,” Maurice said. “That’s the problem.”

Instead, it advanced along the curb, rolling past a large, orange “Shoulder Work” warning sign and then ran into a Southern California dump truck — facing oncoming traffic — one of several Edison vehicles parked on that side of the street while crews did electrical utility repairs nearby.

Several Edison workers joined other bystanders unable to extricate the driver, Maurice said. Edison workers at the scene declined to discuss what happened with the Times-Delta.

Nobody was in the Edison truck which also caught fire, and no other injuries were reported.

Visalia firefighters reported putting out the flames in about 15 minutes.

Police closed off traffic on Caldwell between Akers and Shirk Road to the west for hours while they investigated the crash scene.

The crash occurred in front of Turnberry Place, a gated housing community. Roger Frasier, a resident there, said he and his neighbors have been concerned that merging traffic just west of Akers poses a traffic hazard, as some cars speed to get ahead of other cars that will not let them merge.

Maurice said Tuesday that the initial investigation turned up nothing to indicate that the box truck was blocked by another vehicle from merging into the single traffic lane.

Where the truck came from and what it was hauling wasn’t immediately clear Tuesday. Some officials from Visalia-based Proteus, Inc., showed up at the crash scene.

The group provides job training and other career assistance, and one member of the group said the box truck belonged to Proteus, and the driver worked for it, though he declined to provide any additional information.